As the Internet and its underlying technologies have become increasingly familiar, attention has become focused on Internet security and computer network security in general. With unprecedented access to information has also come unprecedented opportunities to gain unauthorized access to data, change data, destroy data, make unauthorized use of computer resources, interfere with the intended use of computer resources, etc. These opportunities have been exploited time and time again by many types of malware including, but is not limited to computer viruses, worms, Trojan horses, etc.
Recently, some new types of software have emerged, collectively called “spyware.” Spyware, while not as malicious as the aforementioned conventional viruses, Trojan horses, etc., may still cause problems for computer users. For example, spyware may be designed to log keystrokes, track which websites a computer user visits, and/or transmit personal information to a third party.
Keyloggers are not the only security threat faced by reliance on suspect hardware. It is fairly easy to install virtually undetectable traffic sniffers that catch a snapshot of all of the network traffic that goes through a particular browser of a computer. This can be made to operate as a plug-in for a browser, such that it could even see certain types of secure traffic such as SSL/TLS (secure socket layer/transport layer security) traffic in a plain text form.